He spotted the military vehicle that had passed them, parked in the parking lot of the firehouse, beside a big silver delivery truck.
Johnny pulled in. “Here we go. We can find out what’s going on.”
People in hazmat suits were carrying sacks and boxes to idling cars. Johnny watched as a hazmatted soldier dropped a sack and a small box in the back of an F-150 pickup. The truck took off.
Johnny popped his trunk, waited for someone to carry supplies over. He rolled down his window. “How long is the quarantine gonna last?”
The soldier came around to the window. He was a young guy, Asian. “Two weeks, at least.”
Johnny jerked his thumb toward Kelly. “Her folks are sick. What is she supposed to do?”
“Feed them and keep them hydrated.”
“And what if she gets sick, and I get sick? Who keeps us fed and hydrated?”
The solider looked left and right, like he was looking for help. “Look, I’m just handing out supplies. I don’t have the answers. Listen to the radio.”
How could they do it, Johnny wondered? Go house to house, carry out the infected and take them…where? To big tents? CNN said twenty-eight thousand people had gotten sick in Wilkes-Barre in two days. Those tents would need to be awfully big.
“There aren’t enough hazmat suits, are there?” he asked the soldier. “Not enough doctors and nurses.”
Johnny could barely hear the soldier’s words through the faceplate: “There’s nothing doctors can do for them.”
Johnny spotted movement out the picture window: Kelly, wearing one of the white surgical masks from the survival kit they’d been given. He watched as she went three doors down, to the Baer’s house, and knocked. When no one answered, she let herself in.
Ten minutes later she came out and went to the next house down. The Pointers lived there: old lady Pointer, always digging in her flower garden out front; her son Archie, who worked at the body shop; and Archie’s kids, Mackenzie and Parker.
What the hell was Kelly doing? She wasn’t the type to be ripping off her neighbors while they were in there dying. Whatever it was, she was all but guaranteeing she would catch the virus.
Cursing under his breath, Johnny pulled on his Steelers windbreaker and headed out. “I’ll be right back, Pop.”
“We gotta leave by three, don’t forget.”
Clutching the doorknob, Johnny opened his mouth to tell his father that people were dying, that no one was going to the frickin’ movies. He didn’t, though.
“I won’t, Dad.” He closed the door and headed toward the Pointer’s house.
For once, Johnny wanted to go to the drive-in. Not just to escape the nightmare unfolding in his town for a few hours, but because it was the only place his dad seemed like himself. It was the only thing keeping his dad going.
The Pointers’ front door was ajar. Johnny knocked, called, “Hello?”
“In here.”
Hands in his pockets, feeling like he was surrounded by the virus, Johnny followed her voice down a hallway covered in water fowl-patterned wallpaper, into the Pointer’s living room.
The four of them were sitting on couches and stuffed chairs, hands in their laps, all perfectly still except for Parker, whose lips were wrapped around a straw, sucking greedily from a water bottle Kelly was holding, his throat pulsing as he swallowed. The TV was on, showing some Pixar flick. Wet stains bloomed on the couch cushions beneath each of the Pointers. The smell of piss was overpowering.
“Jesus, what are you doing?” Johnny asked.
Kelly held out a mask. Johnny took it, pulled it over his mouth and nose. It was one of those little plastic jobs you wore when you mowed the lawn, probably not worth shit against a virus that the news described as incredibly resistant, able to survive on surfaces for days.
“What are you doing?” Johnny repeated. “The more houses you go into, the more likely you are to catch this thing.”
She shrugged. “My folks have it. I know I’ve been exposed.”
“No, you don’t. You don’t know that for sure.” Johnny did not want her words to be true, for his sake as well as hers. “You’re dancing with death, coming in here.”
Kelly chuckled. “Dancing with death. That’s poetic.”
Actually, it was a line from one of his band’s songs, but after saying it out loud he was too embarrassed to admit he’d just quoted his own band’s lyrics.
Kelly wiped Parker’s chin with a kitchen towel she had hooked through her belt. “I kept thinking about Mackenzie and Parker. I babysit them sometimes. I kept picturing them in their rooms, all alone, scared to death. Not able to move. Hungry. So I came to check on them. Parker was just like I pictured him—all alone in his room. Probably since yesterday.”
“You touched him? Jesus.”
Kelly put her hands on her hips. “He can hear you, you know. So can his mom and dad.”
“Sorry,” Johnny muttered. They were looking at him; all four of them.
Kelly squatted in front of Lara Pointer, guided the straw into her mouth. Immediately, Lara began pulling on the straw, her mouth suddenly animated, looking completely normal. The news had described how the virus keeps people from initiating movement, but not from reacting; seeing it, however, was another thing completely. If she could drink, why couldn’t she talk?
When she’d finished, Kelly went to the Pointer’s sink and refilled the big plastic water bottle before heading for the door. Johnny followed her out, closing the door behind him.
Instead of turning right, back toward her house, Kelly headed left across the lawn.
“Where are you going now?” Johnny called after her.
“When’s the last time you saw the Cucuzzas?”
“What are you gonna do, go door to door?”
She stopped, turned to face him. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“You’re out of your mind. It’s like you want to die—”
She held up both hands to ward off his words and shouted, “They’re all alone. They’re scared. Can’t you see it in their eyes?”
He stood on the Pointer’s front stoop, not wanting to think about their eyes.
“Can’t you?” Kelly asked.
“Yeah. I can see it.” He would see it for the rest of his life. And, God, he didn’t want to go through it. Johnny looked at his watch. “Look, I have to take my father to his drive-in, or he’ll try to drive himself. Will you be okay?”
“No,” she said, like it was the dumbest question she’d ever been asked. “Will you?”
“No,” he admitted. “I guess not.”
A pickup cruised by. They both watched it in silence. There were fewer vehicles passing every hour.
“They’re saying three percent of people seem to be immune to the virus. Did you hear that?” Kelly said.
“I don’t love those odds.”
“No, they suck bad.”
It was a chance, though. There was hope.
“Neither of us has it yet, and lots of other people do. Maybe that means something,” he said.
Kelly nodded. “Maybe it does.”
Johnny had a sudden urge to give Kelly a hug, but he was afraid it would be awkward, or Kelly would think he was weird. “I’ll check on you in the morning,” he said. “That okay?”
She nodded. “Thank you.”
Back at the drive-in, Johnny was terrified he was going to start nodding at any minute. He was actually glad to have something to do to take his mind off it, even if it was filling popcorn boxes for no one.
He wondered what it felt like, to be trapped in your frozen body. Were you numb?